General News

Sara Whitcomb, assistant professor, Department of Student Development, has been selected to receive the 2014 University of Oregon College of Education’s Horizon Alumni Award. The award is given in recognition of alumni less than 10 year post-graduation who demonstrate a commitment to excellence and a significant or ongoing commitment to extraordinary work, research or volunteerism.

Associate professor Jason Irizarry, College of Education’s Director of Urban Education, was selected to receive the Antonia Pantoja Award from the Latino Scholarship Association, Holyoke, Mass., and Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts for his leadership in the education of Latino/a youth.

David R. Evans, director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Education’s Center for International Education, and professor, Department of Educational Policy, Research and Administration, was named an Honorary Fellow of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of comparative and international education.

The College has moved up to 42nd in the nation in the 2015 edition of U.S. News and World Report’s “Best Graduate Schools.” Also this year, the College ranked 33rd among “Graduate Schools of Education” at public universities and our online master’s degree program, Science Education Online, ranked 42nd in the report’s “Best Online Programs.” The College is consistently in the report’s “Top 50 Graduate Colleges of Education.”

Robert Maloy, senior lecturer, Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies, and Lynn Stephens, Department of Computer Science, were awarded $424,867 from the National Science Foundation to develop adaptive tutoring technologies to help increase the participation in mathematics of underrepresented populations that often avoid STEM careers.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded a $92 million, 5-year contract to strengthen higher education in Afghanistan to a consortium headed by Family Health International that includes the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Education, Purdue University, the Afghan Holding Group and Altai Consulting.

Mary Deane Sorcinelli (Ed.D. 1978), associate provost for faculty development, founding director of the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development, and professor in the higher education concentration, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Network of Women Leaders in Higher Education. The award is presented to a woman in higher education who has demonstrated significant leadership and promotion of women in the field of higher education.

Yedalis Ruiz, a doctoral student in the Higher Education concentration, is one of eight recipients of the 2014 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). The award recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education, who demonstrate a commitment to developing academic and civic responsibility in themselves and others, and whose work reflects a strong emphasis on teaching and learning.

Five faculty members in the College of Education have received 2014 Civic Engagement and Service Learning Faculty Fellowships from the UMass Amherst Provost’s Committee on Service-Learning. They are: Benita Barnes, associate professor, Department of Educational Research, Policy and Administration; Sara Whitcomb, assistant professor, Department of Student Development; Robert Maloy, senior lecturer, Marie-Christine Polizzi, lecturer, and Florence Sullivan, associate professor, all of the Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies.